History of Pirates

Pirates are people that make a living from robbing ships. They steal anything of value from jewels to cargo. Some of them even take over ships and kidnap important people and make ransom demands. They are fearless people who live by one code, and that is to make money at all costs. They respect the chain of command, and so only the captain sets the rules. The captain has to have good leadership skills and be respected by his crew. The second he makes bad decisions or loses the respect of the crew he can be overthrown as captain.

How It All Began

Pirates have been there for a very long time. As long as there were merchant ships with valuable goods in open waters, pirates were there to strike. It is unclear when this practice started, but traces of pirates can be seen in the first century BC. In this period, they happened to rob one of the ships that Julius Caeser was on. This did not turn out well for the pirates because they angered the Roman Empire.

A man named Pompey was appointed to eradicate this growing menace and ensure these sea thieves would not strike again. He was very tactful in his approach to this matter. He knew that taking them on haphazard would not work and so he managed to set up teams and break up the ocean into sections. He took on the pirate’s section by section killing thousands of them and causing the few remaining ones to retreat and to cease and desist from their actions.

A few centuries later in Northern Africa, piracy was reborn again like a phoenix from the ashes. This new group of pirates were more ruthless and more effective than the ones defeated by Pompey. They gained so much attention and earned the name Barbary Corsairs. This fearless Ottoman gang raided merchant ships and took part in raids on European coastal towns and villages. These attacks were made to grow the Ottoman slave trade. They were not picky about who they captured, and so their slaves were mixed, that is black, white, Jewish and Muslims.

These raids were so intense that people who stayed in coastal towns were forced to flee and find refuge elsewhere. As a result, most of them remained uninhabited for a very long time. They brought new ways of shipbuilding, which meant that they could extend their territory. The US in 1802 attempted to defeat these ruthless sea thieves but failed. It was only when the French sent a large fleet with qualified men to Tunisia and Algeria that things started to change. Even the French struggled for some time to defeat them. They were only successful around 1820 when the Barbary Corsairs finally surrendered.